From Here to Eternity
by Shane C
Summary: A view of all of the events we didn't get to see in #54, covering the three years between the Animorphs winning the war for Earth, and their decision to leave it behind to search deep space for their friend, Ax. Will stick to canon as much as possible; my goal is to expand the ending, not change it. Full description inside, reviews are very much appreciated!
1. Prologue

_**Foreword**_

 _ **(AKA the dreaded Author's Note)**_

 _Feel free to skip everything in italics and jump right into the story; I'll not hold it against you. I just wanted to take a moment to explain the why of this piece...why I'm making it. I'm an adult now. When I look back on my childhood, a few things stand out as sources of total pleasure. The Animorphs are one of those things. Hours spent reading and re-reading the books. Dozens of hours spent doing chores to be able to afford the next one. Everything having to do with this series brings a smile to my face...except for the way it all ended. And I'm not even saying it was the_ wrong _ending; that's not for me to say, that's the author's call. But I will say that in my opinion, it wasn't_ enough _ending. Us most loyal to the series...we committed so much to it. In this age of ADHD and get-bored-click-off, spending your time and money reading 70+ canon books isn't an investment to take lightly._

 _I feel that the ending we got was a very, very meager payoff for the investment we made, as fans and readers. Maybe I'm the only one who feels that way, I don't know. If so, then me writing this can just be an exercise in therapeutic narcissism. But if there are other fans out there who wanted to see more of how things went for our heroes between the 100 or so pages in which the Animorphs won their war, and then were unceremoniously killed off, then hopefully this will bring you a little satisfaction and pleasure._

 _If you've made it this far, thanks for your candor. This is planned to be an all-encompassing, multiple point of view, full book, in which I try to fill in the blanks of the mysterious three years after the Yeerk War. I ask you kindly to leave a review here and there if you read. Whether you like it or not...well, that's what I'd like to know in your review, lol. What you'd like to see, what you'd like to see less of...the review tool is all of our friend, writer and reader alike. Thank you in advance, and I do hope you enjoy the piece! Now...let's see what our old friend Marco has to say :)_

 **Marco**

 **Two months after the Yeerk defeat at Earth**

I've always been a problem solver. I'm not bragging, but my contributions to the war effort have been chronicled to death already. I'm just saying, any and every bind has a solution. It may not be pretty or fun, but there's always a way to get from Point A to Point B, if you know how to look for it. I almost always know how to look. But for the first time that I could remember, I was stumped. And that scared me, because it was an important problem that needed a solution.

On the surface, you might think that Jake sitting around his parents' house, doing nothing, was no big deal. You might even say that he'd earned it. I happen to know my best friend better than anyone, though. I'd known him my whole life. We went through the wars together. A lot of people use that phrase metaphorically; of course, I'm using it literally. We fought the wars together, man.

So yeah, on the surface, him taking a breather was nothing to worry about. I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm sure staying close to his mom and dad was some therapeutic thing for the way they lost Tom. Jake's parents didn't know about Tom being a controller until the very end, so it was a really sudden thing for them to lose him. The funny thing is, though...it was a sudden thing to Jake, too. I mean, yeah, he knew for three years that Tom was a middle manager at Yeerk-Mart. And a long life expectancy wasn't part of the benefits package for Yeerk managers. But somehow, after everything we'd seen...after everything we'd _done_...Jake never really expected to lose Tom. Up until the point where he gave the order for Rachel to take him out, I really don't think he knew that Tom wasn't coming home.

The reason I was so stuck on what to do about Jake's stagnancy was because I wasn't really sure who he _was_ anymore. Everything from before we got drafted to fight that war was so _pale_ to me. It's not like I had amnesia; I could still remember shooting hoops with Jake, having bottle rocket wars in the woods by his house, sleepovers, hanging at the mall. It's just...how could that stuff possibly have any weight compared to the three years of hell we went through? Not just the fighting. That was bad enough. But the exhaustion...man, I cannot express what it feels like to never sleep well for _years_.

The secrecy, that's a whole other thing, too. It's been two months since we beat the Yeerks and were able to drop all of the lies. But you go three years lying to everyone about everything, except for a handful of people. It's a very hard habit to break. At some point, the lies and secrecy just become natural, just turn into your day to day life. Ax was always going on and on about how adaptable humans are. Now that we've gone from normal, to extremely abnormal, back to somewhat normal again...I can kind of see what he meant.

Again...not bragging. But I really do feel fine now. Normal. I'm actually glad to get back to the world I know, but now I've got the advantage. How many people grind jobs they hate their whole life to buy crap they don't really need? I don't have to do that. But before you start thinking of me as spoiled or entitled, think about what I had to go through with my mom. How many times I had to look Visser Three in the eyes. How much stress I had to live with, how much fear and pain was in my daily life.

I _already_ put in my grind, all right? And I don't see anything wrong with reaping the benefits of it, now that it's over.

That's what worries me...hell, _scares_ me, about Jake. I was able to flip the switch. I was able to go back to life, now that the fight's over. He...hasn't been able to do that. And if it was just like he was taking a rest, I wouldn't be so worried. Have...have you ever had a best friend? One you've had since you were little, I mean? If so, you know what I mean when I say that you get to know them in a way no one else does. You know what they're thinking in any given situation. You can guess what they're going to say, what they're going to do. You know when they're going to call you on the phone. You can sense their moods, and they can sense yours, and it all just becomes so normal that you don't even think anything of it.

Well, this Jake...this post-war Jake...this was not my best friend. It's like he'd been made a controller (that's that paranoia – yeah, I've actually considered that possibility. I know what reality I live in now, but sometimes the _old_ reality creeps back in.) Of course, I'm a logical guy. I know what's really wrong with him is psychological, emotional...PTSD, depression, I dunno, whatever.

What keeps me up at night is that it's getting worse, not better. He's showing no signs of putting this behind him, moving on. He's isolating more and more every day. He doesn't do interviews. I actually caught on pretty quickly to the fact that in the long run, that would be _good_ for him and his image. The battle-wearied commander, tragic hero, whatever...it would play. It would sell.

I'm starting to realize that it's not a game, though. Not for Jake. He doesn't care about his long term image or his marketability. He's not interested in any of the outrageous things people wanted to do for him, to make his life more comfortable, to show their appreciation. The one conversation we had about Tobias...it really freaked me out, to tell you the truth. Because while Cassie was disappointed and worried about Tobias' disappearing act, Jake actually seemed envious of him. He made it sound like morphing, losing yourself, flying away...like that was the most logical thing in the world.

So it was all of these things on my mind as I strolled through the east wing of my new home after a long day at CBS studios. Pitch meetings, schmoozing with the producers, interviewers, news anchors. That was my life now, and I'm not going to lie, I love it. This is the shit I looked forward to, on the off-chance I survived the Yeerks and we could get rid of them.

I loosened my tie with one hand and concentrated on not spilling the drink in the other. I looked up at the vaulted, oak-beamed ceilings in the east wing. _The east wing._ Of _my_ house. Not bad for a kid who'd almost been evicted from an 1,100 square foot rathole apartment only three years before. I looked at the flagstone fireplace in the study, and even though it was around seventy degrees outside, I decided I wanted a fire. I'd always wanted a fireplace, and now I had four of them. Little realizations like that were still hitting me at random times and blowing my hair back, and in all honesty, I hoped it never stopped. I didn't want to take it for granted – any of it. I didn't want to take for granted that in two months, I was worth more money than most of the athletes and actors I admired. I wanted to appreciate that the glass in my hand was Waterford crystal. That my suit was Brioni. But more than that stuff...I had made it through something that would have killed anybody else. The proof was in the fact that I was breathing. I was safe. I wasn't broken.

As my night butler lit my fire, I settled into the recliner beside it. I took a sip of my drink. And my thoughts turned away from me, and my success, and back to Jake. My comrade. My best bud. The guy I'd do anything for, if only I knew what to do. And I thought about the fact that he wasn't broken yet, but he was breaking. He was. And I had no idea what to do about it.

But, like I said, solving problems is my thing. And as I sat there, beside my ridiculously out-of-season fire, an idea started to form.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

 **Jake**

The doorbell got my attention. Barely. I can't say it woke me up, since I'm honestly not sure if I'd even really slept in weeks. I looked up insomnia on webmd, and I seemed to have all the symptoms. People who sleep normally don't really understand insomnia. They assume that it's just staying awake a lot, sleeping only a little.

It's not like that. It's more like you're never able to do either one. Being awake feels like dreaming. Your skin feels all rubbed down with sandpaper. Your muscles and bones feel brittle and weak all the time. Just walking down the hall to the bathroom feels like it takes an eternity, and you're not really sure if your feet are actually touching the carpet. Your thoughts slow to a crawl; it's like always watching a movie where you've missed the first hour. Total confusion.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no stranger to a sleepless night. Sometimes, it feels like that's all I ever had, during the war. But back then, when I was in the fight, when everything slowed down and the adrenaline and horror faded into background noise, I was always able to catch up on sleep. It's like some deep instinct in my brain knew that the next terror was just around the corner, and it knew I'd need to be rested up to deal with it.

That's over now. I can never sleep. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm getting older. Maybe, now that my subconscious knows the fighting is over, there's nothing to rest up for.

Maybe it's only justice. Maybe sleep is a mercy I don't deserve, and so I'm not allowed to have it.

Either way, if it were only me suffering, I'd be fine with it. You have no idea how deep my self-loathing gets at four am, when I'm neither awake nor asleep. When my thoughts go on autopilot in those horrible moments, it's like having my eyelids cut off and forced to watch the worst horror movie ever invented. Only it's ten...no, a hundred times worse. Because as I watch the replays of all of my mistakes, my friends dying, my _family_ dying, I have to feel it all over, again and again and again.

So maybe, now that you know all of that, you can forgive me for how short and snappy I'd gotten. There was a knock on my bedroom door, the insistent knock that belonged to my mom. I wanted to scream. I wanted to snatch up the clock radio and throw it at the door so hard it would blow off the hinges. I managed to reign it in enough to say in a normal tone of voice, "No, mom. Not now. Just not now."

"Honey, it's important," she called softly through the door. I heard the fear, the worry, in her voice, and my self-hate deepened another level. They were trying their best. They didn't know what to do with me. They wanted to help. They knew I wanted to be left alone. I could only imagine how terrible it was for them...but it seemed like everything in my emotional gas tank was being burned up on myself. I had very little left over for anybody else.

When I didn't respond, a more authoritative knock came at the door, followed by a woman's husky voice. "Mr. Berenson? My name is Doctor Hamilton. I'm head of the Xenovirology Department at the Centers for Disease Control. I've flown in from Atlanta on urgent business; may I please come in?"

I sighed. I wanted to tell her to get lost. But I knew that if it weren't really important, she'd have never gotten past my parents. "Come in. I'll give you five minutes."

The door opened, and a tiny mouse of a woman that did not at all match her voice came in. Her lab coat, which was probably a child's size small to begin with, still tried to swallow her up. To her credit, she didn't make a face at the smell of the room, with the dirty dishes and laundry scattered to hell and breakfast. She didn't make a face at me, lying on my comforter, unshaved and unshowered for at least two days...maybe as many as four. Insomnia makes you lose track of time, too. All she did was look around for an acceptable surface to sit on. After not finding one, she folded her hands in front of her and smiled at me.

That smile softened me up a bit. It told me that she wasn't seeing a dirty teenager in a filthy room. More importantly, it also told me that she wasn't here to talk to Jake the Yeerk Killer, hero of Earth. It was a small, polite smile with zero judgment in it. It told me that she was simply here to do a job. I liked it. It made me feel normal for a tenth of a second...which was much more than I was used to, lately. So I decided to make at least a token effort at civility.

"Doctor," I said politely. "Sorry about...all this," I gestured around the room, and in that moment, I genuinely was. I had been through a lot...so much that I'd generally stopped caring about insignificant things like hygiene. But in that moment, I felt a bit guilty. I'd been raised better. I may not have cared about the state of my room, but my mom was probably mortified.

Her smile broadened into genuine humor. "This is like a vacation, compared to the level four hot zones I usually work in. Before AC-1, I was a lead researcher on the effects of Ebola Zaire on primates. Compared to a liquefying Rhesus monkey, you look pretty good."

'Keep this chick away from Cassie,' was the first thought that flashed through my head...and it hurt. It must have shown on my face, because Hamilton's smile faltered a little. To change the subject, I asked, "AC-1? What's that?"

"First contact. Alien Contact One. Overnight, we got a whole new department at the CDC – identifying and classifying any and all microbial, bacterial, and viral agents who may have been introduced into our ecosystem by the Yeerks, Andalites, Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, or the Gedd."

"What about the Skrit Na?" I asked. "They've been coming here longer than any of them."

"The Skrit-what?" she asked...and then her confusion quickly turned to excitement. "Are you saying there's _another_ alien race we should be concerned with?"

"How do you not know about this?" I wondered out loud. "I thought you guys were sharing info with the Andalites?"

Her small, pale face darkened. Her mouth pursed down into a tiny frown. "Yes, well. The federal government has some pretty strange ideas about confidentiality, need-to-know information, and priorities. Apparently, an extra species of microbial carriers is less important to planetary security than securing a tasting booth at the World Chocolate Championship for the Andalite civilian elite. Our top priority is medically clearing five Andalites to eat chocolate in France."

I busted out laughing. Honest to God, the sound surprised me, it had been so long since I'd heard it. How long had it been since I'd found something funny? "You're joking, right?" I asked her.

She couldn't help grinning herself, even though she was clearly not happy about it. "Not at all. They're coming on-planet three weeks before the competition and volunteering for quarantine in order to be allowed to attend. These Andalites are something else."

I thought of Ax at the Cinnabon and grinned again. "I recommend some extra security. They're not used to taste."

She laughed, a pleasant, husky sound. I noticed for the first time how young she was, and impulsively asked her her age. She told me she was twenty-three, and I asked her how it was possible for her to have her doctorate and be leading a new program at the CDC.

"Oh, I have _several_ doctorates," she said casually, waving her hand. "I won't bore you with details; I'm basically a genius." The statement would have been obnoxious, but the way she said it with a sardonic wink at me made it charming. It was artless, but it was real. I felt a small flutter of attraction toward her, but that feeling was suddenly beaten down by a couple of others. One was guilt; no matter how things were between me and Cassie, no matter how we left it, I still felt a sense of total loyalty. The other was shame. I was suddenly aware that my t-shirt was stained and I probably smelled like one of Marco's gym socks.

She didn't give me time to dwell on it, though. "So anyway, I've already almost taken up the five minutes you gave me. Shall I get down to the business at hand?" I nodded. "We need your help, Mr. Berenson."

"Jake," I insisted. "Mr. Berenson is that bald guy downstairs."

She laughed. "You can be Jake to me if I can be Allie to you. Deal?" I grinned and nodded. "Cool." The weird part about hearing the head of alien viral studies say "cool" was that it didn't seem weird at all. "Anyway, we do need your help, Jake. We would very much like to run some tests, observe you for a short while."

"Why?" I wondered. "Why me?"

"Well, obviously, you've been in contact with all of these species, and for quite a while now. We just want to know if there have been any...effects."

I was feeling decent for the first time in forever, so I decided to try a joke. "Sometimes I spontaneously turn into a housefly. Is that not normal?" I asked, deadpan.

She looked at me blankly for a second before getting it and laughing again. Telling my dumb joke was worth it to hear that laugh. I don't know what it was about this girl...woman...but she had somehow woken me up a little. Not a lot – I'm not saying I was suddenly not depressed, or in love, or anything like that. But, for the first time since the Yeerks surrendered...I felt mildly interested in something. After two months of feeling dead and hollow, it was a good feeling.

"Well, we've been given specific instructions to not focus on the effect that the Escafil technology has on your genome. We'll do DNA testing, of course, but that will be just to check for natural mutations, like those we'd see with an alien nanovirus." I must have looked uncomfortable, because she laughed again. "Jake, you said yourself you can turn into an insect. You could do it right now. I think a virus changing a couple of nucleotides around isn't much of a fuss. Do you?"

"I guess not. So what are you going to be looking for, then?"

"Well of course we'll ask you about a billion questions. Mainly though, we just want to see if you have any unusual antibodies. Those would be the fastest way to backtrack any microbes you may have encountered, and find out how your body dealt with them. But, I mean, you're a healthy teenager. Nobody drops dead when you sneeze around them. I don't expect to find anything sinister. But it's my job, you know?" I nodded. "So...what do you say? Will you help me out?"

I sighed. People had been asking things of me for two months, but it looked like I was about to give my first yes. "What do I have to do?"

"Take a ride with me to the lab at UCLA Berkeley. It's seriously only like a five hour ride. We'll keep you there for forty-eight hours, and not a minute longer – you have my word on that. In return, the United States Federal Government is going to write you a check for two point five million dollars." For the first time, she glanced around the room. "What do you say? I think you could afford to hire a maid with that."


	3. Chapter 2

_**Author's Note:**_

 _I said in the story synopsis and the Foreword that I wanted this story to jive with the canon of #54. That's nothing but the truth; I don't want to change what was written by the author, just expand upon it. I'm going to do my best to make that happen. But there_ are _certain things that you may notice, if you're a canon freak. Things that don't exactly sync up. That's because this project would be basically impossible if I were to go only by the short summary of what happened that we were given in #54. For example, Jake is not going to go through that whole first post-war year without speaking to Cassie once. This is what I mean when I say that my work might contradict canon a small bit. It won't be enough to influence the overall events that happened in #54, but my hope is that you'll be able to swallow these small conflicts with canon content in order to enjoy my version of what really happened in those three years. I just thought it was worth mentioning at this point, so you don't get in too deep, notice them yourself, and think I'm a liar or a dummy who doesn't know my Animorphs, lol. Thanks for bearing with me, and I hope you enjoy!_

 **Marco**

"Uh huh. Okay, good. Thanks, Mrs. B. No, Jake'll be fine, I promise. Let me know how he seems when he gets back, okay? Thanks again."

I flipped the phone shut and sunk back into the plush leather of the town car I was riding in. All at once, I didn't feel like going straight to the satellite CNN studio just then. "Carlton, hang a left. I want to cruise the beach for a while."

Carlton was my favorite driver from the car service I used. He didn't ask any questions or try to remind me that I had a ten o'clock time spot at CNN. He just flicked his eyes to the rear view mirror, saw that I was serious, circled his thumb and forefinger into an "OK" symbol, and put on his left blinker.

The reason I wanted to just cruise aimlessly was pretty simple. My work was easy. I enjoyed everything about my TV appearances, everything from make up and wardrobe all the way to live shoots where I had to think on my feet or else look stupid. Being in the spotlight energized me, made me feel alive.

This Jake thing...it wore me out. Thinking about it makes me feel unsure and nervous, and I'm not really used to feeling like that anymore. I don't like it. But Jake obviously wasn't going to figure this out on his own. He needed me to do it for him. I owed him for all of the times he was there for me. And I'm not talking about the war with the Yeerks. As far as I was concerned, we were all even on that score. We'd saved each others butts too many times to count.

I'm talking about the stuff before the war. My mom...well, you know all about my mom. People like to focus on how great it was that she never really died at all, and how we were all together again. What they don't realize is that, for me and my dad, she really did die. She was gone. We had a funeral, we had breakdowns, we suffered. It was very real to us. The fact that we had her back didn't erase the horror of losing her in the first place.

Jake was there for me. Jake got me out of the house when I couldn't stand to be there anymore. He got his dad to talk to my dad, to try to help out there. He listened to me when it hurt too bad to keep it all bottled up. How many eleven year olds will do that for their buddy? How many kids would have cut and run, unable to stand being that close to it? How many kids would be willing to make someone else's pain their own?

 _That's_ why it was my job to help him. I pay my debts. And this was an account that could never be balanced, and I was okay with that. If I had to be sneaky about it, so be it. It was all about the end result.

See, I'd already been through the CDC's wringer. In the week after the Andalites declared the war over, they basically insisted that I be quarantined and scanned for alien bugs or whatever. They paid me a ridiculous amount of money for the two days they locked me up...but I got the feeling that if I'd refused, I'd have ended up there under lock and key anyway. See, they didn't know I would end up being the public face of the Animorphs back then. They knew Jake was our leader, so they assumed the job would belong to him. So obviously, they didn't want him upset. They thought Cassie was his girlfriend, so they didn't want to upset him by snatching her up. That just left little old me for them to poke and prod and stick.

Honestly, though, I really hadn't minded the break. And they _did_ cut me my first big post-war check. An added benefit was meeting Allie...Dr. Hamilton. She was adorable, funny, smart...basically a female version of me.

So naturally, I'd chatted her up. Got to know her a bit. And I learned two important things about her. She was cool, she was willing to play ball, as long as it didn't interfere with her work. I got the idea that she was like the female Einstein of medicine. But, unlike most geniuses, she wasn't aloof or weird. She didn't have some superiority complex. She seemed really down to Earth, which is always attractive.

The second thing about her...the thing that got the wheels in my head turning even back then...was that she had an advanced degree in psychiatry.

Now, Jake had done a decent job, right after the Yeerk surrender. He handled business better than I expected. But I'd been watching and waiting for him to pull away, and he didn't disappoint. I waited for that first worried call from his parents, because I knew it was coming. And, of course, after a few weeks, it came.

By that time, it was about a month after we won. My life was a complete whirlwind. I spent more time on jets between LA and New York than I spent in my own bed. But I found the time to call Jake to feel him out. I don't BS Jake, normally. So I flat out told him that his folks were worried, Cassie was worried, _I_ was worried. I asked him what he thought about maybe seeing a shrink.

He did what I expected – played it off. Nah, man, I'm fine. I'm just taking a breath. Taking my space. I'm good, blah blah blah. So I respected that and backed off...then. But I told myself that if things didn't get any better with him, or God forbid he got worse, I'd find a way to do something to make him get help. I hadn't known what that was until last night, sitting by my fire.

Allie had snatched me up to look at me under a microscope. Would Jake find it weird if the government did it to him, too? Probably not. He didn't even know they'd made me go. It was a plausible way to get him out of the house and into a medical setting.

And if I'd happened to get Allie's personal cell number while I was there? If I happened to give her a call and ask for a teensy favor, so what? I mean as far as the CDC was concerned, the more data on the potential alien plankton or whatever they had, the better. I was doing _them_ a favor, really. And if I asked Allie to mix in a couple of psych questions in with the million medical questions? Was that really the worst thing in the world? Let the professionals handle it, you know? And if Jake didn't know that he was being analyzed, he couldn't resist it.

Devious? Yeah. But hey, sometimes the path from Point A to Point B isn't a straight line. Sometimes it's a bit twisty. Sometimes it's a tiny bit devious, out of necessity.

The point is, I'd done something for my bud. I'd tried to help him when no one else could. I'd keep an eye on the situation, talk to Allie once they cut Jake loose, and try to figure out where we needed to go from there.

"Carlton? Let's head to the studio. I guess we don't want Wolf Blitzer to blitz in his pants."


	4. Chapter 3

**A/N**

 _I'm very sorry about the long hiatus. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I was going to work on this one anymore...I started in with that self-doubt, the feeling that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. To me, this feels like the most important Animorphs piece I've ever written, and will probably be the last, and I'm still terrified of effing it up (I'm becoming such a damned perfectionist in my old age...grr.) But my faithful, awesome, constant readers are here, Iris and Marilou...I always said that if just one person was reading, reviewing, and enjoying, then I had a responsibility to finish what I started. And because of you two, I've got double the reason and motivation to get off my ass and get going on this again. Thank you two for being so awesome, this fic is dedicated to you two. Hope I can do something with it that you think is special! Enjoy, girls!_

 **Cassie**

I have faced down battle-hardened Hork-Bajir shock troops by myself. I've been terrorized by handfuls of Visser Three's insanely scary morphs from across the galaxy. I've morphed into insects who's brain is approximately ten cells big. But I had never felt nervousness like I felt when I deplaned in Washington D.C. for my first meeting with the President.

On the ride to the White House, I went over the possibilities for my summons. I'd only been in the President's sub-cabinet for two weeks. He'd never even spoken to me directly, not really...a handshake and a "Welcome aboard," was the extent of our contact with each other. I wasn't aware that the man even knew I existed. Then, while I was out in Yellowstone helping Toby get her people settled, my sat-phone rings, and it's the Vice President telling me he's got a private plane for me on standby, and I needed to get to DC as quickly as possible.

This was obviously not a social call. As much as I wanted to believe it, the President was not flying me 2,100 miles just to give me a pat on the back. The Secret Service guy next to me either couldn't or wouldn't give me any real answers to my questions; he claimed he didn't know any more than I did, and I tended to believe him. Which left me very nervous and worried, naturally.

We went through security at the White House gate, which was no joke – they had sniffer dogs and mirrors to check the undercarriage of the car, the whole nine yards. The guards seemed tense and totally on-point. The three years I spent in the war made me sensitive to stuff like that. When there was danger in your life 24/7, you become super attuned to potential threats. When things are going bad, it's almost like a smell in the air that you can pick up. It's a vibe you can feel. And I was feeling it now, because of the guards' behavior at the checkpoint.

Finally, they finished their inspection and waved us through. The town car pulled right up to the front doors, and the agent next to me told me to stay put for a moment. He got out of his side and walked slowly around the car to my side. His eyes were active behind his sunglasses, scanning anything and everything, and I didn't miss the way his hand was very near the pistol on his hip.

Yeah, something big was definitely up.

He opened my door and led me up the steps and into The White House. There was no time to take a second tour of the place; my guard hustled me to an elevator. We went up a floor, and I did my best to keep up as he quickly lead me to a large room with a huge oak table dominating the middle of the space.

At the head of the table sat the man in charge of the United States of America. He was on a telephone, but he smiled easily at me and waved, which I took as a good sign. To his left was a severe-looking man with sharp features and sharp eyes. He nodded grimly at me and motioned for me to take a seat to the right of the President. I did, marveling at the fact that I was sitting not two feet away from the leader of the free world.

"Yes, I understand," he said into the phone. "Keep me posted, General. Thank you." He hung up, leaned back in his chair, ran a hand through his hair, and sighed. After closing his eyes for a short moment and collecting his thoughts, he leaned forward toward me and gave me another one of those ultra-political smiles. "Miss Jacobs, thank you so much for coming so quickly. I promise, I wouldn't have pulled you away if it weren't important."

All of a sudden, everything seemed surreal. Absurd, even. It was the Miss Jacobs thing that did it...I was still a month shy of my seventeenth birthday. My mom was Mrs. Jacobs. I was Cassie. Just plain old Cassie. I felt lightheaded and I had to pinch myself – _hard –_ on the leg to bring myself back to the moment. "Understood, Mr. President. How can I help?" I asked, trying my best not to sound like a squeaky kid.

He didn't mince words or waste time, which the guy was sort of famous for. "We've had some developments that are not good. They directly involve you and your work, and I wanted you to hear it from me." He sighed heavily, and to his credit, it didn't seem put on at all. "The Brazilian government called this morning. Your Taxxon friend has been murdered by poachers. I'm so sorry, Miss Jacobs."

That was a blow, but I absorbed it well. Arbron wasn't exactly a best friend of mine, I didn't know him very well personally. But I'd heard from Ax about his sad, tragic life, and I still felt deeply for him. He'd suffered and fought and struggled so long, just to be shot dead by some jerks weeks after the cease-fire he'd fought for. Disgusting. The President seemed to be waiting for me to say something, so I said, "That's terrible, sir. Thank you for the condolences."

He nodded. "I wanted to talk to you about the proper way to go about this. We're still learning about the Andalites...their government, their society. We know that there are many secrets between the military, government, and general public. I wanted your opinion on who, if anyone, I should notify among the Andalites."

I honestly didn't know the answer to that. The President was right – the Andalites were really secretive when it came to informing their civilians. The last thing we wanted to do was blast a message to the Andalite media net and anger the military. "I'm really not sure, sir. I think the best thing to do would be for me to notify Ax privately, and let him decide how to share out the news."

He looked surprised for a split second, and then smiled broadly. "That never crossed my mind. Your personal connection with Mr. Isthill will come in handy in this case." I had to physically stop myself from barking a laugh at the President of the United States referring to Ax as "Mr. Isthill," but I didn't say anything. He'd learn about Andalite naming conventions and proper modes of address soon enough. "Before you leave, Mr. Carver here will escort you to our extraplanetary communications center so you can inform him."

"Speaking of Mr. Carver, I'd like to formally introduce you. He was our best agent in the CIA for years. He successfully dealt with several rogue nations, dictators, and terrorist organizations in his time with the Agency. We felt he would be uniquely suited to running a new program. It's an offshoot of the CIA, and they deal with threats related to our changing situation as one people of many here in the galaxy. And with that, I'll let him give you the briefing that you were really brought here for. I'm sorry to deliver bad news and run, but my plate is overflowing today and I have a lot to do." He offered his hand, and I shook it. "I'm very sorry about your friend, and I want to thank you for all of the work you've done and will do for your country...and your planet. Thank you, Miss Jacobs."

"Cassie," I absentmindedly corrected him, and I almost slapped my hand over my mouth. I didn't know much about politics, but I _did_ know that you don't correct the President.

To my relief, he smiled and nodded. "Cassie then...good. I hate formality with the people I trust. Good luck, and if you need anything at all, do not hesitate to contact my office. Good bye for now, Cassie." He left the room still smiling.

Mr. Carver waited until he was out of the room before speaking. "Cassie, you can call me Carver. As the President said, I'm in charge of a new program, the Interstellar Affairs Task Force. The IATF's mandate changes by the day; we didn't know this was coming, so we're still scrambling to identify and respond to threats. Right now, our main focus is on the religious and extremist terrorist groups who've popped up since First Contact."

I blinked – this was all news to me. "Are there a lot of those? Terrorists who don't like aliens?"

He nodded, dead serious. "You have no idea. People have been looking for things to hate for time immemorial, and now it seems that they've got a focus for that hate. We've got at least three dozen militant groups on our radar right now, and that number is growing by the day. And it's not just aliens who are their targets – our very own government is very high on their list." Before I could ask why, he explained. "Several of these groups see that the US Government is the main point of contact with the Andalites. Deinfestation was technically a NATO job, but our soldiers and agents made up a brunt of that force. They know that technically, Visser One is our prisoner. They see all of this, and they've drawn the conclusion that our government has been in contact with these species for a long time, and that we've been lying to them."

I thought of Marco, with all of his conspiracy theories, and I just had to ask; "Have we, sir? Been in touch with alien species before?"

"Officially? No. I have my suspicions, but I can swear to you that if we had contact with extraterrestrials before two months ago, I was never told about it." He thought for a minute, and then added off-handedly, "Oh, and don't call me sir. We're still figuring out the new power structure, but I'm pretty sure you rank a lot higher than I do, in the grand scheme of things." I gaped at him, but he ignored it.

"So what I need to brief you about is very important, Cassie. It concerns a group of domestic terrorists here in the US. They call themselves the Prophets of Fate, and they are nuttier than squirrel shit." He seemed to remember he was talking to a sixteen year old girl, and he actually blushed a little. "Sorry."

I grinned. "I'm used to it. I've been on a team with Marco Young for over three years. I'm used to a little bad language."

He laughed, nodded, and continued. "Anyway...these Prophets. They're a real problem. The Brazilian government isn't admitting it, but we think they joined up with some like-minded psychos down there, and that's who really killed Arbron. If that's true, then they got organized so fast that it's scary."

"What do the "poachers" say?" I asked. "Surely you've sent someone to question them, right?"

He looked impressed and thoughtful for a moment. "You really are a soldier, aren't you? You think like one." He drummed his fingers on the expensive table. "Normally, that's exactly what we would have done. Unfortunately, the Brazilian government killed the three men as they "tried to take them into custody." I don't buy it for a second, it stinks like a cover-up to me, but you can't really argue with corpses. We have no choice but to accept the official narrative out of Brazil."

I made an intuitive leap that was worthy of Marco, and my blood ran cold. "If these Prophet people would go so far as to kill one alien in South America, what are they going to do about a Hork-Bajir population of almost 200 in their own country?"

Again, he looked impressed, and pointed a finger-gun at me as if to say 'nice shot.' "Exactly what we're worried about. We've already sent the 51st Infantry attachment of the Wyoming National Guard to Yellowstone; as we speak, they're clearing out all of the civilians and forming a perimeter around Camp Hork-Bajir. That's the official government designation for the land ceded to them, at least until they give us an official name."

He sighed and looked genuinely conflicted. "Cassie, I'm coming to the point, and I don't like it. I'm just going to shoot you straight, okay?" I nodded. "You're the official liaison to the Hork-Bajir. We need you to go back out to Yellowstone and explain to them why there's a military unit on and around their land. We need them to understand that we accept and welcome their presence here, and we're only there to protect them."

I was confused. "Okay...that _is_ my job, and I'm happy to do it. So what's the problem?"

"The problem is that even though that's what we need, we can't do it. After the events in Brazil, the computers say that Yellowstone is the place with the highest probability of violence in the world in the next twenty-four hours. Please don't take this wrong, because I don't mean to sound condescending, but it doesn't sit well with me to send a teenage girl into that hornets' nest."

I understood that he wasn't trying to condescend, but my pride bristled just a little. "Carver, I fought the Yeerks for three years before anyone else even knew they existed. I can handle myself."

He nodded. "I know that. I have nothing but absolute admiration for what you and your friends did. Like I said, you're a warrior. I don't doubt it for a second. But in the Invasion, the Yeerks didn't know who you were. Now...here, watch this, and you'll see what I mean." He pointed a remote at the big screen television in the corner and turned it on.

On the screen was a man wearing a creepy blue robe with a hood that completely covered his face. Apparently, the video was cued up to what I was supposed to hear. The robed weirdo was already talking. "...and furthermore, in addition to eliminating the alien interlopers, the Prophets of Fate will also protect the American people from domestic threats, as well. Number one on this list of threats is Cassie Jacobs. She has been instrumental in convincing our government to allow the interlopers to exist here. She convinced them to give the alien scum one of our most valuable treasures, Yellowstone National Park. She must be stopped; she _will_ be stopped. The Prophets swear to you, the American public, that this imminent threat will be neutralized. Cassie Jacobs will bleed for what she has done. She -" Carver cut the TV off.

"You get the drift, Cassie. These whack jobs know who you are, what you do, and they're gunning for you personally. The advantage you had over the Yeerks doesn't exist here. Which is why, after discussing it with the President, we've decided to put a buffer between you and the harm these assholes want to do to you. We're going to assign you an aide, who will make direct contact with the Hork-Bajir in your place. You'll relay your communications for the Hork-Bajir to this aide, who will then pass it along."

"No," I said instantly. "The Hork-Bajir know me. They trust me. They're my friends. I won't let anything come between us – they need me right now, and I'm going to be there for them."

Carver had a pained look on his face. "Cassie, be reasonable. You'll still be working for them, we're just going to cut out the face-to-face meetings for a while. We do things like this all the time in the Agency. We have to protect our assets, and you're our greatest asset in this matter."

I sighed. "You don't understand, Carver. It's not just that the Hork-Bajir are friends. They are a very honorable people. They've risked everything to be free. They fought and died with and for the humans. They value things like bravery and honor; it's everything to them. What would they think if we told them there's danger, and I wasn't willing to show up?" I didn't wait for an answer. "It's not happening. You said yourself you're not my superior, so you can't order me not to go to them. I'm going."

"The President could order you not to go, then," he said thoughtfully.

"No, he couldn't. I'd resign and go anyway. I don't expect you to understand, but I do expect you to respect my decision. Whether you back me up or not, I'm going to be on a plane back out to Yellowstone as soon as possible."

His cold, blue eyes bored into mine for a long moment. Slowly, a smile spread across his face. "What did I say? A soldier, through and through. I'm beginning to understand how you and your friends toppled an empire single-handedly." He stood and started collecting the sheets of paper scattered in front of him. "I'll get us some backup and a jet, and we'll head out as soon as they're assembled." He laughed at my look of surprise. "Hell yeah, I'm going," he answered my unasked question. "I'm not politician; I'm a soldier, just like you. Let's move out." He seemed to remember something. "Oh, but we've got to make a five minute detour. You've got to call your friend and tell him about Arbron. But after that, we're on our way to Wyoming, okay?"

Once on the elevator, he surreptitiously offered me a fist-bump and a smile. I decided then and there that I liked Carver.


	5. Chapter 4

**A/N**

 _I'm boring myself to death with these Author's Notes, so I'm sure I'm killing everybody else...thanks for putting up with me. I thought of something else that needs mentioning, kind of important. The book this fic is based on was published seventeen years ago. I'd imagine that, like me, the people who enjoyed them as kids are more or less grown up now. I respect the fact that this was written as a young adult series, but I also want to at least address the fact that a lot of the readers are adults now. So this little #54 companion piece is going to be for a slightly more adult audience. I'm not going to have the Animorphs snorting meth and randomly banging each other, but I'm also going to address the things that the series (rightfully) ignored in canon...such as, as a friend once put it, "The Animorphs are supposed to be teenagers, but they're written as sexless beings with nothing but blushing crushes on each other." In other words, I'm going to inject a bit of the real world into KA's fantasy world. Hope it makes it a bit more enjoyable for you, now that most of you probably have cars, careers, and families! And if I remember anything about being a teenager, the more real and in-your-face a book was, the more I liked it, lol. Anyway, enjoy!_

 **Jake**

Once, I was a Controller for three days. Being locked up in the belly of the CDC's facility wasn't that bad...but it still sucked.

Part of the testing I was being put through was a sleep analysis. That was a total joke. Between my insomnia and the fact that I was hooked up to about 150 different electrodes and wires, it basically consisted of me lying on my back and staring at the wall clock, waiting for six am to roll around so someone would come in and disconnect me from the monitors and computers around the bed.

To pass the time, I thought about the things that I'd been ignoring over the past couple of months. I'd been so busy torturing myself, I'd drawn up into myself like a hermit crab in its shell. When I realized how little I'd thought of my friends, the ones that were still alive, I was sort of ashamed of myself.

I think part of the fact that I was thinking about these things was that I was finally out of my parents' house. Nothing against my parents, of course – I _wanted_ to be there with them. But, because of the death of Rachel and Tom, there was a black cloud in that house. I know I contributed to that cloud, more than my fair share. But watching my parents struggle to come to grips with the things I'd been living with for a long time...not to mention the fact that they themselves had been subjected to the horror of being Controllers...yeah, it was depressing, no getting around it. When you consider the fact that I was already primed to be depressed about the way it all ended, it was a recipe for a mental breakdown.

Here at the CDC, I'd gotten a dose of what the others must be experiencing out in the world. I was treated with total respect. Admiration, even, in some cases. It's not like people were saluting me or falling at my feet, but they all had a certain aura about them when they talked to me. I could see them hanging on every word I said. I realized they were seeing a hero. On one hand, I felt like that was totally ridiculous. The word "hero," when associating it with myself, tasted like ashes in my mouth. It tasted like a totally bogus lie. But on the other hand...ridiculous or not, true or not...that's what these doctors, nurses, and technicians were all clearly seeing in me.

Allie and the rest of the CDC team kept me too busy to reflect on any of that for most of the day. I just caught up in the six hours I was supposed to be sleeping, like right now. I wondered about the others...mostly about Cassie. I was not okay with the way she and I left things, but I also couldn't see any good way to right that wrong. I knew through Marco that she was marching right along. He told me that she already had some government job taking care of the Hork-Bajir. He said she had already taken the High School Equivalency Test, which technically made her a high school graduate at sixteen. She was registered for the pre-veterinarian program at UCLA. Basically, she was kicking ass and taking names. Who was I to intrude on that? Wouldn't having me in her life be an unnecessary complication? Especially given my depression and my total lack of motivation? Yeah, it would. Better to just back off and let her do her thing. Maybe not better for me, but definitely better for her.

Marco...I knew I didn't have to worry about Marco. I rarely turned on the TV, but at least half the time I did, he was either on the screen, or someone important was talking about him. I know my best friend, and I could see from his interviews that he was eating up every second of it and loving it. He wasn't faking, he was ecstatic. 'Good,' I thought. 'If anybody deserves to come out of this ahead, it's Marco.'

I told myself there was no use worrying about Tobias, and that, at least, did not feel like a cop-out. What happened, happened. I know that at my command, I took away the one person that could have made Tobias human again. But on the other hand, his attitude toward me pissed me off. What right did he have to be angry with me? He lost his girlfriend; I lost my cousin. Because of that, we were all alive – and I mean the human race, not the rest of us Animorphs. Hating me wasn't going to change that. We could have supported each other, gone through it together. But he chose to hate me and to disappear. That was his right, and I didn't deny him that. I didn't agree with it, but I'm a big believer in letting people choose their own path. He wanted out, he wanted to be left alone, so that's what I was going to do. Maybe that was a selfish way to look at it...but I had to be honest with myself. I couldn't even take care of myself right now. It would have been absolutely useless to try to make Tobias' problems my own.

Ax was another one I had no worries about. His life couldn't have gone any better if he'd scripted it. 'Well...maybe that's a little unfair. If he wrote the script, I doubt it would have involved having his brother murdered and spending three years in a guerrilla war on an alien planet, seventy-two light years from his home,' I told myself. But still, he was basically an Andalite teenager, and he was an interstellar hero. He was the Andalite liaison to Earth, and a Prince with command of his own brand-new Dome Ship. It was hard to look at Ax's story and feel too bad for him. He'd faced a lot, but he'd worn it well and he was now in a position that any Andalite soldier would kill to be in. He'd signed up to be a soldier of his own free will while the rest of us were drafted. I knew he would be happy.

Another thing I spent time thinking about is where _I_ should go from here. It seemed like everybody had made their choices and gone on their path really quickly after the Yeerks surrendered. It was a little funny that I was the only one floundering, unsure of how to adjust. Not funny "ha-ha," but you know what I'm saying. I mean, for three years, my friends looked to me to be the strong one, the decisive one. They asked me to make the hard calls, and I was always there to make them. I never regretted it, up until the last day of the war. That last day, when I lost Rachel and Tom...that broke me. I had handled everything up to that point. I'd been able to deal. It seemed so unfair that the last thing that happened was the thing that paralyzed me, but I don't lie to myself.

I decided then and there that I'd start my own motor again as soon as I got done with this medical dog-and-pony show. Maybe my decisions wouldn't be big ones, maybe they wouldn't mean anything. Maybe I'd even make some bad decisions, make some mistakes. It was sort of a liberating thought to realize that I had that luxury now. During the war, mistakes could get people killed. At the end of the war, my mistakes _did_ get people killed, people I loved. But now it was over. Now I could screw up if I wanted to, and it wouldn't have consequences on anyone but me. How cool...

"Jake? Hey, Jake...rise and shine, it's six o'clock." I opened my eyes and saw Allie unhooking electrodes from my chest and smiling down at me. "Finally got some sleep...some _good_ sleep, according to your Alpha waves. Nice! How do you feel?"

"I feel...strange," I said, and she laughed that melodic laugh that never failed to make me smile, too. "I feel...rested? And hungry." As I said it, my stomach rumbled. Depression is a wonderful appetite suppressant. I've always been kind of a big guy, and I was shocked during my intake when they weighed me out at 156 pounds. But right now, I was _starving._ I felt like I could eat a breakfast for four and still find room for more.

Still smiling at me, she said, "Cool. We've only got one more round of questions, and then we'll have you on your way home. But first, we'll do breakfast. I'm hungry too. Any special requests?"

I thought on it for a minute. "Eggs, definitely. Sausage and bacon. Oh, and waffles...does the kitchen do waffles? With lots of syrup and butter. And some home fries or hash browns would be awesome."

She widened her eyes in amusement, and her smile never left her face. "Absolutely. You got all that, Mike?" A guy behind the observation glass gave a thumbs up and disappeared, I guess to fill the order. Her look turned speculative. "Your Body Mass Index is way lower than it should be for your height and age. The appetite confirms it. Can you tell my why you haven't been eating lately?"

Anybody else, I probably would have told them to mind their own damn business. But Allie was the first person I'd met that I genuinely liked since the Yeerks surrendered. "I don't really know. It's not on purpose. I think that maybe I'm just a little too preoccupied to think about food, you know? It's not like I'm starving myself to death," I added, a little defensively.

"Not at all. I'm guilty of it too. When I start on a new project, or work gets busy, I just seem to let regular meals be the first thing to slide. Not exactly healthy, but I know what you mean." She finished disconnecting the leads from my body and went to sit at the little table in the corner of my room. She motioned for me to join her, which I did after stretching all of the sleep out of my muscles.

She leaned across the table toward me. "I can only imagine what goes through your mind, Jake. I've only heard the official story about what you and your friends went through. I'd bet my car that there's a whole lot more that none of you have been able to talk about yet." I nodded and looked down at the table, and she gently tilted my chin back up to look at her. "The last thing I want to do is pry. But you have to know that you can talk to me, you can trust me. Nothing goes into any report unless I say so and sign off on it. Unless you say otherwise, anything we talk about stays between you and me."

"That's good to know, Allie...but there's really nothing," I said. She looked disappointed, like she knew I was weaseling, but didn't press me.

"I understand. Can I ask you some other questions? I promise, if they're too intrusive, let me know and I'll drop it, okay?" I gestured for her to go ahead. "I take it from the two nights you spent here that sleep is a hard thing for you to get a hold of, most nights. Would that be fair to say?" I nodded. "There are lots of causes of insomnia, everything from simple stress to variations in brain chemistry. If you had to guess, what would be the number one cause of your sleepless nights?"

I thought that over for a moment. I honestly had never stopped to ask myself _why_ my sleep was so shitty, not seriously. Mostly I was too tired to care about the why of it. "I don't think its any one thing," I finally said. "I do feel bad about...things that happened. Choices I made. They do eat at me. When everything is quiet and dark, that's when those regrets come out to play. That's when my mind starts racing." She was nodding, and all of a sudden, I felt like maybe I was showing too much weakness. "It's no big deal," I insisted. "I can handle it. It's just...persistent...sometimes. That's all."

"Do you think that your lack of sleep is affecting you negatively? I'd be shocked if it wasn't. Sleep is the brain's way of resetting and recharging. Not sleeping can make you feel all kinds of things. You might feel dull or slow, maybe even depressed. You experiencing any of that, Jake?"

All at once, I _wanted_ to talk about everything. I really did. But even though Allie said it was private, I had my doubts. Everything that happened in this facility was probably recorded. What if some underpaid technician decided to pad his bank account by selling Jake the Yeerk Killer's secrets to the National Enquirer?

"I honestly couldn't say. Feeling abnormal has been my normal for so long, I don't know how to gauge it anymore."

A sympathetic look flashed through her eyes, and it had two different effects on me when I saw it. One was irritation. That look was exactly why I didn't want to talk to _anybody_ about any of it. The other was gratitude...somebody other than my mom, dad, and friends gave a shit that I was struggling. Weird, huh? Feeling irritated and grateful at the same time? But that's what it was.

"Well, I'm not here to do a psychological evaluation," she said, but her eyes flicked away from me and to the left for a split second when she said it. I read somewhere that that happens when someone is lying. "I'm more concerned about your physical state, and your lack of sleep is affecting you physically."

She didn't exactly take my hand, but she put the tips of her fingers over mine. "Would you like some relief from the insomnia, Jake? Because we have meds for that, good meds. Nowadays, getting a good night's sleep is as simple as taking a pill with a glass of milk twenty minutes before bedtime."

There it was – the first offer to medicate me. The thing that I knew was probably in my future, but also the thing I dreaded most.

Why did I dread it, you might ask? If you could pop a pill and have your main problem disappear, why _wouldn't_ you be happy to take it?

Well, that was a question that didn't have a clear answer, either. I guess a big reason was pride. I was beaten down, no doubt. I was ashamed of my decisions at the end of the war. But the funny thing is that pride and shame are not mutually exclusive. You can have both at the same time, and I did. My pride said to me, _Hey Jake, you went through three years of covert war with the Yeerks and never needed anything more than a Tylenol. Are you really going to start popping pills now that its all over? Are you that far gone?_

Another reason was deeper, mostly buried beneath my consciousness, but I was still aware of it. I had a nebulous fear that once I decided that it was okay to medicate my problems, it might never stop. A couple of times, late at night (or early in the morning), I found myself standing in front of my dad's liquor cabinet. I hadn't taken a drink for the same reason I hadn't taken a pill. Once it started, I instinctively knew it might never stop. And that scared me just as bad as the Yeerks ever did.

Allie let me work through this, and when I didn't give her an answer to her question, she patted my hand. "It's a big decision. I know you're a strong guy; that's a total understatement. I know you've had a rough time of things, but I also know you're still a proud man – and you have every right to be. Proud men often have trouble accepting help, even if it's just from a harmless prescription. How about this? I'll write you a prescription for a sleep aid, and you stick it in your pocket. Fill it, don't fill it...the choice is yours. And even if you do fill it, the choice to take one or not is always still up to you. Would that work?"

Was I too proud to accept help? Or was I being talked into something I didn't want by a pretty girl? I honestly couldn't tell. But I said, "Sure, Allie. That works. As long as it's still my choice, I don't see any harm in it. Thanks."

She gave me a genuine smile. "Cool. That's settled then." She patted my hand again. "Before we get started on these boring ass questions about runny noses and the last time you had a rash...you want my advice, Jake? Not as a doctor, but as a friend?"

"Actually, I'd love that," I admitted.

"Okay. The reason you were able to keep going during the war is pretty simple – you were in constant motion. An object in motion stays in motion; an object at rest remains at rest. That's true of people, too. My advice is to get yourself back in motion. Go to the gym and work out. Spend some of this money that the Feds are about to pay you. Find a way to have some fun." She held up a finger to stall a protest that wasn't coming from me anyway, and I stifled a laugh. "I know you're a responsible guy, that's part of your DNA. So feed that side of you, too. Do things for other people, even if you don't feel like it. When it's done, you'll feel better. On the rare occasions I get to watch the tube, all I see is Marco, Marco, Marco. Which is fine – Marco is funny, he's likable, he's entertaining. But Jake, you might not think so...but people want to know your side, too. Marco is like the opening band; people enjoy it, but it's not who they really came to see. Maybe it's presumptuous, me speaking for the rest of the population...but we want to hear from you. So maybe you do a few of those interviews you've been avoiding. Not for you, for everybody else. You might find that it does you some good, too."

She leaned back from me as Mike entered the room and started setting down trays of breakfast food. She waited for him to leave, then said, "Anyway, that's all. It's all up to you, but that's my unsolicited two cents. Take it or leave it, your choice." She started dumping ketchup onto her plate of hash browns and said, "So, you ready to finish up the boring questions so we can get you home?"

Boy, was I ever. Allie had given me a lot of food for thought, and I wanted to get home to chew it over. But I thought that a lot of her advice was good advice, and I could see myself taking it.

Get back in motion and stay that way. Sounded a lot better to me than staying at rest.


	6. Chapter 5

**Cassie**

We landed at a small, private landing strip about twenty miles from the Hork-Bajir preserve. A gray-and-white camouflaged Humvee was waiting on the tarmac. Carver got behind the wheel, I got in the passenger's seat, and our two teammates hopped in the back. Carver fired up the GPS, found the quickest route to the Hork-Bajir via the back roads, and we were on the way.

I'd gotten to know our backup on the plane ride to Wyoming. I don't know what it was, but I liked these CIA people a lot better than most of the other soldiers I'd met. They were cocky, but they were also cool. It was like hanging out with normal people, except they were carrying an array of deadly weapons and probably knew more ways to kill you than James Bond.

Gia, the female on the team, got an alert on her phone. "Got a blizzard moving in, Carver. ETA, five to ten minutes. Hope you're up on your snow driving skills."

The guy, Teller, laughed. "Carver can't even drive in the sand. Tell Cassie about the time you were chasing al-Hazeeri in Tehran, dude."

Carver scowled as Gia cracked up. "I heard about this one! Carv swerved to avoid a camel or something?"

"Game faces, you two," Caver admonished them. I got the feeling he said it because he was getting embarrassed.

Teller got down to business. "All right, Cassie. The plan is simple. You're gonna rendevous with the head Hork-Bajir...Toby, right?" I nodded. "Cool, Toby. I'm with you. If you see or feel anything hinky, tell me _immediately_. This is your show, this is your game. You're the expert when it comes to dealing with this sort of thing, so I'm going to be following your lead."

I appreciated that. It was nice to be acknowledged for the work my friends and I had done. "Okay, thanks. What are Carver and Gia going to be doing?"

"We're going to get with the commander of the army unit that's already on site," Carver said. "We'll take a few of his best men, and we're going to go out looking for these whack jobs. If they're out there, we'll find them."

"And what happens when you find them?" I asked uneasily.

"We neutralize them," Gia said flatly.

"We'll take them alive if we can," Carver said. "But I don't have much hope of that. These fanatics, they fight to the death. They very rarely let themselves be taken alive. The most important thing is that we don't let them get anywhere near you or the Hork-Bajir. Taking them out before they can do any harm sends a huge message to the rest of them – we're not going to roll over. We know what they're trying to do, and we're not going to let them do it."

"These clowns aren't soldiers," Teller said as the snow started to fall outside. "They have jobs and families. When they realize this isn't a game and they're gambling with their lives, they'll find some other hobby. A less dangerous hobby. They'll go back to driving spikes into trees to break the machinery in logging camps, shit like that."

As if in direct contradiction to Teller, the radio under the dashboard squawked to life. "Contact! This is Unit Six. We've taken fire from the tree line. I've got two men down, we're taking automatic fire, and they've got at least one sniper. Request backup to Zone Six!"

Gia was already unfolding a small pocket map. "We got em, Carver!" she exclaimed. "They're between the picket line and us, almost directly. There's no road, we'll have to go in on foot, but we got them."

Carver slowed the Hummer, but he didn't stop. "We don't know how many of them there are. There's only going to be two of us going into the forest..." He thought for a moment, then snatched the mic off of the radio. "Captain Hill, this is Agent Carver. We're coming in from the northeast and we've got your contacts pinched, but our team is small. Can you get a chopper up to give us a fix on where the bad guys are and how many we're looking at?"

A strained voice came back almost instantly. "Negative, Agent Carver. Snow is already too thick for the bird. We have no air cover. My group is still taking fire. Our orders are to hold the line and protect the Hork-Bajir, not to go on the offensive. You do what you want, but we have to hold here."

"Shit," Carver muttered. To the rest of us, he said, "Without air support, it's too risky. It's a stalemate; they won't break the line, but we can't get to them. They'll get tired of taking potshots and run away, eventually."

"But it would be better to get them now, right?" I asked. Carver nodded helplessly, but shrugged as if to say 'What can we do?'

"Stop the truck," I ordered.

"What are you thinking, Cassie?" Teller asked.

"You need air support. I'm going to give it to you," I said. I opened the passenger door and started stripping off my outer layers of clothing.

Three soldiers stared as the teenager in the front seat continued to strip. Carver was the first one to get there.

"Cassie, no way! You're going to _morph?_ "

Gia and Teller high-fived in the back seat. "Excellent!" Gia yelled. "I've been wanting to see this!"

" _Not_ excellent! _"_ Carver shouted. "Cassie, stop taking your clothes off – that's an order!"

"You can't give me orders, Carver," I said softly. I closed my eyes and focused on the osprey DNA that lived inside of me. "I'm going up to find these people. If you guys want to come along and stop them, go right ahead."

"Jesus..." Carver said as I began to grow feathers. "I'm going to lose my job."

"That's so gross..." Teller said as I started shrinking and my face pushed out into a hooked beak.

Gia looked at Carver. "She's going, man. We might as well go too."

Carver sighed. "All right. Teller, you're on the .50 cal. Cassie, you find them, you report back, and you stay out of danger, okay? Remember, these psychos have heavy weapons, and they know who you are and what you can do. If they see a bird flying in a blizzard, they very well might take a shot."

I would have smiled if I wasn't already almost fully osprey. After dozens, if not hundreds of missions against the Yeerks, this barely registered on my fear meter. {This is just a simple recon. I'll spot them, call in the location, and let you professionals do your jobs. Trust me, this is cake compared to what I'm used to. Just be where I can easily find you.} I spread my wings and let the swirling wind pluck me out of the Hummer and get me airborne. I automatically let the osprey's mind do its thing and correct for the wind shears and find the best way to get some elevation. {See you guys in a few!} I yelled as I soared up into the storm.

 _A/N:_

 _I promised myself that I wasn't going to panhandle for reviews in this one...please don't make me, lol. I know not a whole lot has happened yet, but if you don't mind, just leave a thought or two on what you think so far and maybe something you'd like to see from this fic. Thanks! And thanks again, Milou, for letting me know what you think! Its always great to hear!_


	7. Chapter 6

**Marco**

Saturday morning. Blessed, blessed Saturday.

I had only been a celebrity for slightly over two months, but I was quickly learning that there are no real off-days when you're famous. Wasn't too much of an adjustment, to be honest...Animorphs fighting a guerrilla war against alien invaders don't have off-days, either.

There were definite advantages to weekends now, though. Knowing that any interruption wouldn't be a life or death matter (no matter what the showbiz people thought) meant I actually got to relax during my R&R time.

Which was exactly what I was doing. The air had too much of a fall chill in it to enjoy a swim, but the sun was out and the birds were singing. Way too nice a day to waste on video games and HBO. So I was laying out by the pool, eyes closed behind my shades, a slight smile on my face. After three years of constant tension, the quiet times just seemed so much more peaceful. Life just seemed to stand still, like a photograph of something happy. My headphones were beside me, but I couldn't bear to listen to music – it was just too quiet, in a good way. The only sounds were a far-off lawnmower and the blue jays in the tree to my left.

Life was good. Life was real good.

I heard the phone ring inside the house, but no biggie. My butler, Weatherbee, would handle the caller and leave me alone. He was under strict instructions not to disturb me unless it was absolutely necessary.

I took a sip of my ice-cold Mountain Dew. My brain made a random connection that taste or smell sometimes brings. _'Mountain Dew was always her favorite,'_ I thought as a memory of Rachel surfaced in my mind. In this mental picture, she was sitting across the aisle from me on a city bus. Her feet were propped on the seat beside her, backpack casually slung on the floor, holding a bottle of her favorite soda. She had that sardonic half-smile on her face, like she got when she was on the verge of saying something witty. She was young, beautiful, and alive. I tried to hold onto that mental snapshot for a moment, but it faded, as they always do.

Of course, there was no way for me to be sure how the others felt when they thought about Rachel. I assumed for the others, they probably went fairly quickly to feeling sad about her death. I'm not heartless, of course I felt sad about it too. I missed her. I mean, yeah, when she was still around, Rachel and I didn't always get along. We didn't always agree...okay, so we hardly _ever_ agreed. But we were the Yin and the Yang. We balanced each other out. Rachel and I had never had a mushy moment, never shared an understanding hug or anything like that. We didn't need that. We both just knew. I loved her, and she loved me. We both would have died before saying it...but like I said, we didn't need to. We knew.

That analytical part of me whispered that it was better that it had played out this way. I hated that part of me sometimes, but it was there and it wasn't going anywhere. It said that Rachel wouldn't have been able to adjust to post-war life. She wouldn't be able to kick back on a Saturday and relax. Rachel had been an action junkie. No, Rachel had been a _danger_ junkie. I saw it more and more as the war escalated. When we first started, Rachel hadn't flinched away from a fight. The deeper we went, the more it seemed like she was actively searching for a fight. The worse the odds, the higher she got off of it. She loved her teammates, she cared deeply about all of us...but toward the end, that wasn't enough for her to be able to keep from putting us in danger in order to get her battle high. That's, like, the definition of an addict.

If she'd survived, I think she would have been totally lost in the new order of things. People wouldn't have understood her...hell, _I_ barely understood her. She would have lost patience with the circus I was so good at managing. People sucking up to her, people asking things of her, people wanting interviews...all of it would have pissed her off. I know that Tobias had built up this fantasy in his head of having a nice, quiet, happy life with Rachel after we won, but that was just the wishful thinking of a really screwed up kid. Not that I'm blaming him – if anybody had a right to be screwed up, it was Tobias. But still, sometimes I don't understand how he managed to sell himself that story. He knew Rachel as well or better than the rest of us. If he thought that Rachel would have been happy with living a domesticated life, he was out of his mind.

In an alternate universe where she lived, she probably would have started out slow. Just like she did in the war, she would have dipped her toes in to test out this new life. She would have been able to fake it for a little bit. For a while, she probably would have enjoyed being a celeb and a hero. But then she would have taken up skydiving or rock climbing. Then, when the high of that wore off, she would have started looking for a fight – her _real_ drug of choice. There's always a fight available for people who are inclined to find it, and Rachel would have been motivated. Tobias would have been baffled by her seeking conflict, but love had blinded him. In Rachel, he'd seen what he wanted to see and had been blinded to the rest. The rest of us had been forced into the fight. Rachel had embraced it, gotten hooked on it. Rachel had been a moth looking for a flame. A beautiful creature swirling toward an inevitable result. At least this way, she got to go out a hero. A martyr. And I hoped wherever she'd ended up, she was able to know that and enjoy it.

"Sir?" The cultured, polite voice of my butler at my ear interrupted my reverie. "It's Mrs. Quaid. She says she urgently needs a word."

I sighed, but didn't complain. Weatherbee had proved himself competent at screening my calls. Beth Quaid was my contact at CNN, and she also had gotten pretty good at deciding what was important enough to interrupt my schedule. I thanked Weatherbee, asked for a fresh drink, and took the phone. "You got Marco," I said, trying not to sound irritated.

"Marco, Beth. We're going to need you in studio today."

"Why? We just did that whole "Andalite relations" piece yesterday and we're not scheduled for another-"

"You haven't been watching?" she asked. "There was a terrorist attack at the Hork-Bajir preserve in Yellowstone yesterday evening." I sat up quickly and felt my heart start beating a little faster.

"Is Cassie-?"

"Cassie's fine," she assured me. "The military had a couple of casualties, but Cassie and the Hork-Bajir were unharmed. That's why we need you. Cassie is unavailable for comment, and we need an Animorph's take on the events. Of course, we'd prefer to interview the Animorph who was an active participant in the engagement, but-"

"Whoa, wait. Cassie was in the fight with these terrorists?" I asked, snapping my fingers at the house. Weatherbee was at my side in a second, and I covered the phone and told him to lay out a suit for me and bring my car around to the front. Getting back to the phone, I said, "You sure she's not hurt?"

"We had a stringer out there. He was working for National Geographic, covering the Hork-Bajir in their new habitat, but when the fighting started he got footage of the terrorist takedown. Apparently, an osprey located them and led a strike team in to take them down. Everybody here is going nuts. We have actual footage of an Animorph in a combat situation – it's a hell of a lot different seeing it than hearing about it after the fact. Greta and Wolf are losing their minds, they want you on air as soon as humanly possible to give your take on it."

I was already on my way inside to get dressed. "Tell them not to blow out their diapers. I'll be there as soon as I can." I hung up and started throwing on clothes.

I was relieved that Cassie and the Hork-Bajir were okay, but I also felt another emotion, one that surprised me...jealousy. Was I seriously a little jealous? And I don't mean about the attention Cassie was getting for her part in the action. I actually felt left out because Cassie got to tangle with some bad guys and I didn't even know about it until the next day. It was an insane feeling...but there it was.

"Maybe Rachel wasn't the only junkie," I muttered as I hurried to knot my tie.

 _A/N_ _– Thanks to Chilazon, Iris, Mr. Good Guy, and Jackhunter42 for leaving your thoughts on the last one! Especially to Mr. Good Guy,_ loved _that you read closely enough to leave that comment! In canon, Jake and Tom ate bacon in one of the regular series books, so I always assumed from that that his family wasn't Kosher...but still, I'm grateful that you caught it and mentioned it!_


	8. Chapter 7

**Jake**

I rolled over and sensed the light shining on my eyelids, and I slowly surfaced.

That's what it felt like. Not like waking up, but like slowly surfacing from the depths of the ocean. Only the depths weren't scary, they were peaceful. I didn't jerk myself conscious from an exhausted state of brain-shutdown, didn't shoot out of bed covered in sweat from a nightmare that made the movie _Saw_ seem tame. I just slowly woke out of a deep, peaceful slumber, the way billions of normal people did every morning.

The first thing I did when I opened my eyes was marvel at the height of the sun shining in my bedroom window. Glancing at the bedside clock, I saw that it was 9:07 – I had actually _slept in_. If I had the words to describe how hellacious the insomnia of the past two months had been, you'd understand just how amazing this mundane-sounding thing was to me. I glanced at the bottle of Ambien on the nightstand and whispered, "Thank you."

Yeah, I was talking to a pill bottle. And it was probably the most sane I'd felt in months, maybe years.

I got out of bed, still marveling at how amazingly refreshed and rested I was. I had energy, actual energy. My mind wasn't covered in some depressed mental fog. While I was at the CDC for my alien disease analysis, my mom had taken the liberty of cleaning my room and washing my clothes. I cracked my window and felt the slight chill of late autumn on the California coast, so I selected a pair of jeans and a three-quarter sleeve baseball t-shirt. On my way to the shower, I stopped at the head of the stairs and called, "Mom?"

"Jake?" she called back. I could hear the worry in her voice, and when she poked her head around the corner at the foot of the stairs, her face matched her tone. I gave her a big grin to let her know everything was cool.

"Morning," I said brightly. "I'm about to hit the shower; mind if I get some pancakes for breakfast?"

The relief in her expression made me feel even better about everything. Sure, I'd been freaking them out. But I felt like I was back. One hundred percent. "No problem, honey. Chocolate chip?"

"Hell yeah! Thanks!" I said, and then headed for the shower. As the hot water loosened up my sleepy muscles, I could barely resist whistling. That's how good I felt.

Have I mentioned how awesome a good night's sleep is?

I toweled off after my unreasonably long shower, noting to myself that it was time for a haircut. I threw on my clothes and took the stairs three at a time. Homer met me at the foot of the stairs, wagging his tail in a hesitant, un-Homer-like way; I lightly berated myself as I realized that my recent behavior had even freaked out the family dog. I got down on one knee and tousled him roughly on the scruff of his neck the way he liked. His tail immediately started going full force and his tongue dropped out of his mouth in that happy-idiot grin. "There's my boy," I told him, rubbing my forehead briefly on his before heading to the kitchen with him right on my heels.

"Morning, buddy," my dad said, saluting me with his coffee cup. "Thanks for talking your mom into pancakes."

"My pleasure," I said with a grin, pouring myself a cup of java. I went to where my mom was standing over the stove and gave her a quick peck on the cheek before joining my dad at the breakfast bar.

"Somebody's feeling perky," she commented, and even though her back was to me, I could hear the smile in her voice.

My dad didn't put down the newspaper in front of his face, and he tried to sound casual as he asked, "I take it the prescription turned the trick for you?"

"Two words, Dad – miracle pill." I snagged the remains of his danish off of his plate and scarfed it. He lowered the paper far enough to give me an amused look before going back to the sports page. "I don't know why I fought it for so long." My dad's a doctor, so he'd gone fairly quickly to the idea of the medicinal route when I'd stopped sleeping and started losing weight.

He set down the paper and turned on the little countertop TV set. "Yeah...why _did_ you wait so long, bud?" he asked. My mom shot him a warning look, and he shrugged.

I honestly didn't mind the question. I didn't feel like I had the ability to be irritated this morning. "I really couldn't tell you," I admitted. "I've been asking myself the same thing since I woke up. I guess I felt like meds would be a crutch, you know? Only now, after getting this sort of sleep, I realize that a crutch isn't necessarily the bad thing I made it out to be. I needed it."

"That, and Dr. Hamilton was the one who asked you to try it." He waggled his eyebrows at me, and my mom lightly smacked his shoulder as she set down a platter of pancakes. "What?" my dad protested. "She's a looker! If she told me to take cyanide, I'd consider it." My mom whacked him again, and all three of us laughed.

"Oh, what's he on about now?" I asked with an eye roll as I heard Marco's voice coming from the TV. I froze with a bite of breakfast halfway to my mouth as I read the headline underneath Marco.

 _ **Cassie Morphs to Combat Terrorists in Yellowstone**_

"I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet," Marco was saying to Wolf Blitzer's interested-looking head on the split screen beside his. "But no, I'm not worried. This is what we do. This is what we've been doing for years. I'm sure she's fine."

"But this _is_ a momentous occasion, wouldn't you say?" Blitzer asked. "As far as we know, it marks the first time that alien technology has been used in a human-on-human conflict."

Marco managed to look disgruntled and amused at the same time. "Human, Yeerk...bad guys are bad guys, terrorists are terrorists. Why should we deal with them any differently? Besides, if these Prophets of Fate had their way, it would have been human-on-Hork-Bajir. So the way I see it, Cassie just got there and did her job before it became an interstellar incident. That's a hell of a day's work, in my opinion."

"Hard to argue with that," Wolf conceded. "Now, we go live to our San Diego studio to hear from Nancy Grace, to give her take on the legal -" I stopped listening and reached across my dad to pick up the cordless phone. As soon as Nancy's image replaced Marco's, I dialed his number.

Surprisingly, he answered on the first ring. "Hey Jake," he said, sounding wary. "I take it you saw the news just now."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded. "Why didn't _she_ tell me?"

"You'd have to ask Cassie herself if you want to know why she didn't tell you. As for me, it's been kind of a busy morning."

"Don't get smart with me, dude. You know this is important to me. I shouldn't be hearing about Cassie being attacked by terrorists on the ten o'clock news, I should be hearing it from my friends!"

Marco sighed. "Jake, _I_ didn't even find out until two hours ago. The fight had been over twelve hours at that point. Cassie never called me. I don't know what you want me to say here." I heard muffled speaking as he took the phone away from his mouth and talked to someone else. When he came back on, he said, "Look, I just canceled the follow-up piece Fox News wanted me to do. I'm heading home. Why don't you come over so we can talk about this in person?" I paused before answering. Just like Marco had been able to do since we were babies, he read my thoughts. "No, I know that I'm not the one you really want to talk to. But right now, I'm all you've got, so deal with it. I need to say a few things and you need to hear them, and I'd rather do it privately."

"All right," I said grudgingly. "I guess I'll come over."

"Hey, don't act like you're doing me a favor. I just waved an on-air consulting fee from Fox for you...that money would have been enough to buy a new car."

I couldn't help myself – I smiled a little. "Like you need another one. See you in a half an hour."


End file.
